Her book Gender, Class, and Freedom in Modern Political Theory (Princeton University Press, 2008) considers the concept of freedom as it developed in the canon of political thought from the 17th to 19th centuries and examines how issues of gender and class affected the dominant conceptions of freedom. Her previous book, The Subject of Liberty: Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom (Princeton University Press 2003), took a more contemporary approach and considered the concept of freedom in the context of political and social issues such as domestic violence, Islamic veiling, and U.S. welfare reform. This book won the 2004 Victoria Schuck award from the American Political Science Association for the best book on women and politics, and Choice recommended this book as "essential" and "feminist theory at its best." Prof. Hirschmann has also published Rethinking Obligation: A Feminist Method for Political Theory (Cornell University Press, 1992), and several co-edited volumes, including Revisioning the Political: Feminist Interpretations of Traditional Concepts in Western Political Theory (with Christine Di Stefano, Westview Press, 1996), Women and Welfare: Theory and Practice in the U.S. and Europe (with Ulrike Liebert, Rutgers University Press 2001), Feminist Interpretations of John Locke (with Kirstie McClure, Penn State University Press 2007), Feminist Interpretations of Thomas Hobbes (with Joanne Wright, Penn State University Press, 2013), Civil Disabilities: Theory, Citizenship and the Body (with Beth Linker, The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), and Political
Theory Meets Disability (with Barbara Arneil, Cambridge University Press,
2017).

Currently serving on the editorial boards of
several leading journals, including The Journal of Politics and
Hypatia: Journal of Feminist Philosophy, Professor Hirschmann has
held a number of prestigious fellowships. She was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College (now the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study), The University Center for Human Values at Princeton University and the Penn Humanities Center. She has also held fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities.Most recently, Professor Hirschmann has received
fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies again, as well as
the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, The
National Humanities Center in North Carolina, and has been invited to be a
Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence,
Italy. She will spend the 2017-18 academic year on leave working on her latest
book, Freedom, Power and Disability. Professor Hirschmann also taught at Cornell University in the Department of Government for 12 years before coming to Penn.